News – Gospel

Raise your voices and lift your hearts as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Damien Sneed, and the 70-piece Chorale Le Chateau webcast live only Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration, an historic hand–clappin’, tambourine-slappin’ celebration scheduled to take place October 24th, 25th and 26th at 8PM ET.
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Wynton Marsalis is sipping hot tea in a church conference room before the evening’s performance. His custom-made Monette Raja trumpet — with its built-in mouthpiece and black opal inlays — sits by his side. He’s riffing on one of his favorite subjects: the universality of rhythm.
“That rolling 6/8 rhythm is in African religious music, it’s in Anglican religious music,” he says, humming a complicated pattern and tapping his fingers on his notebook. “In a slower tempo it would be ‘Greensleeves.’” He scats the melody. “Now stay in that time, here’s the African 6/8 ... now let’s go into the jazz shuffle.” More tapping. “It’s the same rhythm.”
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Rich collection of spiritually inspired works recorded 1988 to 2002, originally released on Columbia Records and Sony Classical, available everywhere October 22.
Concurrent with 16-city “Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration Tour,” October 3-27, featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, conductor Damien Sneed, and 70-voice Chorale Le Chateau
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Wynton Marsalis recently gave the third of six epic lectures that he is slated to give at Harvard University. He promised that this one wasn’t going to be 4 and half hours long, as the last one was. When he got started, the result was part history lesson, part concert, part spoken-word poetry reading. Three hours into the show, his agenda became clear: He was telling a timeless story about love. For Charlie “Yardbird’’ Parker, inventor of bebop. For Bessie Smith, teller of the low-down nasty truth. For Woody Guthrie, who sang about running from the law. For all those who sang about being both broke and broken-hearted. For every artist who cared more about art than celebrity.
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Wynton Marsalis continues his two-year lecture series at Harvard with an exploration of root styles of American music in Sanders Theatre on Feb. 6. Currently the artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis is an accomplished musician, composer, bandleader, and educator who has made the promotion of jazz and cultural literacy his hallmark cause.
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